Translation blunder may have led to Ultraman ban

The use of the word ‘Allah’ in the recently banned ‘Ultraman The Ultra Power’ comic book appears to have been another faux pas involving Google’s translation service.

The original text seems to be an excerpt of an English-language biography for the character Ultraman King that was taken from an Ultraman fanpage.

It describes the character as being “considered to be, and respected as, the ‘God’ or Elder of all Ultra heroes”.

However, Google translates the word ‘God’ into ‘Allah’ when translating from English to Malay.

Instructing Google Translate to translate the first seven sentences in the fan page into Malay yields the exact same words as those in the comic, except that the Japanese characters do not appear in the latter.

Using a rival machine translation service, Bing Translator, yields a similar but slightly different result, but the word ‘Allah’ remains.

When contacted, Google Malaysia public relations chief Zeffri Yusof declined to comment on the matter, but instead directed Malaysiakini to watch a video on how Google Translate works.

[More to follow]